Just when I thought my evil cable provider was making progress, the bottom fell out…again, leaving me with an all too familiar feeling of frustration.
Despite my secretly wishing Comcast would blow off their second appointment to activate a cable outlet in our bedroom, they actually showed up.
Not only did they show up, the tech got things working and, according to Tammy, he was kind and very helpful. Not only did he get the outlet working in our bedroom, he moved our modem to a different location because it was causing interference, which was why our channels were dropping out.
It’s too early to tell if moving the modem will correct the problem or not, but at least he was willing (and able) to do something to remedy the situation.
Tammy was happy because she was able to watch the live coverage of the Jodi Arias trial while working on stuff in the bedroom and packing for her trip to Illinois to finalize things before her sister moves into our house.
I noticed the TV in the bedroom was on when I got home and turned it off because Tammy was watching the trial in the living room.
I didn’t think anything else about it as we continued with our night, eating dinner and catching up on missed episodes of Dallas and Nashville.
A little before 10 p.m.,Tammy said we could finish whatever show we were watching in the bedroom, something we used to do a lot when we had Dish Network.
When I turned on the TV in the bedroom, I noticed that the Comcast box had been turned off. I thought it was odd, but figured it had gone to sleep since it wasn’t being used.
I’m all too familiar with this screen.
I pushed the power button and got the familiar blue screen letting me know the box needed to be authorized in order for us to watch it.
My blood pressure instantly hit the roof.
Me: How does this happen? It was just working three hours ago?
Tammy: I don’t know, but I was watching the trial in here earlier.
Me: I know. I turned off the TV when I got home, but didn’t touch the box.
The next few minutes were spent with me unplugging and replugging the box back into the wall in hopes that it would magically start working again.
Big surprise, it didn’t.
I got in bed and Tammy could tell I was frustrated.
Tammy: Why don’t you just call? You know you won’t be able to go to sleep if you don’t.
She was right because my blood was still boiling that after being stood up and waiting two weeks for another appointment we were able to watch TV in our bedroom for all of three hours.
I called around 10:15 and surprisingly got to speak to a rep rather quickly. I went through the process of proving who I am and we got down to the problem.
Me: I’m not sure why I have to get the box authorized again. I’ve already had it working once.
Rep #1: I should be able to get that working for you. I’ll send a reset signal.
There was a long gap of silence. Long enough that I had to actually look at my phone to make sure we were still connected.
Rep #1: It looks like that box is getting a weak signal and that’s why it’s not working properly.
Me: What? How is that possible? We just had someone here today and the box was working three hours ago.
Rep #1: Well I’m not sure why it’s getting a weak signal, but that’s what it’s showing.
It was around this time we got disconnected. I’m not sure if it was because of something I did (hanging up with my face) but regardless I had to call back.
Enter Rep #2 who put me through the same drill as Rep #1. She was somewhat helpful, but didn’t give me the same details as Rep #1.
She told me that there could be a problem with the box and that I may need to get a new box.
I asked her the same questions about how something like this could happen when it was working a few hours earlier.
She didn’t really have a response other than to say I could get a new box from an office or she could schedule an appointment for someone to stop by. Considering our luck with Comcast appointments, I guess I’m going to try to swap the box out.
UPDATE
I came home after work today and was fully prepared to call Comcast, again, to try to figure out why the box isn’t authorized, only to find that it’s actually working… for now.
I have no idea when the box actually started working, but I do know that it was working around the same time last night too.
I’ll have my fingers crossed when I go to bed tonight.
The Life of J-Wo 
A familiar pattern. I had the exact same thing happen a couple of weeks ago. The cable box seemed to lose the ability to function, just a frozen “this user not authorized” blue screen of death. I couldn’t access the DVR, couldn’t change the channel, turn it off, nothing.
I call Comcast and get the same stupid response: Your box needs to be returned, yada yada. Now, our box is a couple of years old, but I don’t really want to give up on it because it had just been working and I sensed it wasn’t the box’s fault. Plus I didn’t want to lose my DVR’d shows. I wait. I fume. Lo and behold, about 30 minutes later, the screen on the cable box starts running through a reboot program. Then I got a screen with some nonsense about “Channels loading, it will take short 5 minutes.” Well, about 30 minutes later, everything’s up and running again (except the stupid guide, which always takes days to fully recover–what’s up with that?).
Every so often, I get a tech rep who seems to know what’s what. I think they just tell the others to say it’s the box. Yeah, that’s the way to engender customer loyalty!
Try power cycling the equipment, helps in 80% of the time. Trust me I do that for a lilving
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